A Year of Bigger Picture Moments: 2012

 

 Photo credit: Kelly Colgan Azar

For the past week, I've spent a lot of time looking back on the past...not to relive the hard moments and dwell on the heart breaks, but to learn from the past in order to embrace and move forward in the future.

Last Sunday, we attended a church near my parent's home where the pastor was preaching on new year's resolutions. I love these truths I wrote down in my sermon notes: "Learn from your failures and celebrate your successes...Successes come from not only the knowledge of your past, and a desire, but also the willingness to be disciplined in your future."

So, I look back on the past in order to move forward in the future...and I take the lessons I've learned to continue growing and changing as I embrace another year of new beginnings.  Here are my top five Bigger Picture Moments from the past year, the ones that have challenged me in the best possible way to love and live this beautiful life I've been given.

1. Is God Really Enough?

"...There is anxiety that is a real, medical illness...but there is also anxiety that is a real, spiritual illness.  Deep in my heart there is a lie I've believed for far too long: God is not really enough for me...."

2.  My Story, HIS Story

"...This space might be about me, because it is written by me and about my life...but it is even more than that.  It is about the work that He continues to do in me..."

3. To Love Like Him

"...He knows my faults and my mess...but He also knows my heart.  He knows how I long for Him and how, no matter how much I fail, I keep running to Him with a repentant heart..."

4. Rooted & Grounded In Love

"...He whispers those three words again as the storm passes and reminds me that his love is a choice he makes day in and day out.  He knows that love is more than a feeling, more than a fleeting thought..."

5. 5 for 5: Age

"...Because as much as pictures speak a thousand words, hands are like a glimpse into the past and this photo of four generations of hands tells more of a story than any our smiling faces would..."

Linking up with Corinne and Bigger Picture Blogs as we look back on the Best of 2012 Bigger Picture Moments.